The Celts

Celtic Britain (The Iron Age - 600 BC - 50 AD)

Who were they?The Iron Age is the age of the "Celt" in Britain.Over the 500 or so years leading up to the first Roman invasiona Celtic culture established itself throughout the British Isles.Who were these Celts?For a start, the concept of a "Celtic" people is a modern andsomewhatromantic reinterpretation of history. The Celts were warringtribes who certainly wouldnt have seen themselves asone people at the time.The "Celts" as we traditionaly regardthem exist largely in the magnificence of their art and thewords of the Romans who fought them. The trouble with thereports of the Romans is that they were a mix of reportage andpolitical propaganda. It was politically expedient for the Celticpeoples to be coloured as barbarians and the Romans as agreat civilizing force. And history written by the winners isalways suspect.Where did they come from?What we do know is that the people we call Celts gradually infiltrated Britain over the course of thecenturies between about 500 and 100 B.C. There was probably never an organized Celtic invasion;for one thing the Celts were so fragmented and given to fighting among themselves that the idea of aconcerted invasion would have been ludicrous.The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by similar language, religion, and cultural expression.They were not centrally governed, and quite as happy to fight each other as any non-Celt. They werewarriors, living for the glories of battle and plunder. They were also the people who brought ironworking to the British Isles.The advent of ironThe use of iron had amazing repercussions. First, it changed trade and fostered local independence.Trade was essential during the Bronze Age, for not every area was naturally endowed with thenecessary ores to make bronze. Iron, on the other hand, was relatively cheap and available almosteverywhere.Celtic family lifeThe basic unit of Celtic life was the clan, a sort of extended family. The term "family" is a bitmisleading, for by all accounts the Celts practiced a peculiar form of child rearing; they didn't rearthem, they farmed them out. Children were actually raised by foster parents. The foster father wasoften the brother of the birth-mother. Got it?Clans were bound together very loosely with other clans into tribes, each of which had its own socialstructure and customs, and possibly its own local gods.HousingThe Celts lived in huts of arched timber with walls of wicker and roofs of thatch. The huts weregenerally gathered in loose hamlets. In several places each tribe had its own coinage system.Farming

The Celts were farmers when they weren't fighting. One of the interesting innovations that theybrought to Britain was the iron plough. Earlier ploughs had been awkward affairs, basically a stickwith a pointed end harnessed behind two oxen. They were suitable only for ploughing the lightupland soils. The heavier iron ploughs constituted an agricultural revolution all by themselves, forthey made it possible for the first time to cultivate the rich valley and lowland soils. They came with aprice, though. It generally required a team of eight oxen to pull the plough, so to avoid the difficultyof turning that large a team, Celtic fields tended to be long and narrow, a pattern that can still beseen in some parts of the country today.The lot of women. Celtic lands were owned communally, and wealth seems to have been basedlargely on the size of cattle herd owned. The lot of women was a good deal better than in mostsocieties of that time. They were technically equal to men, owned property, and could choose theirown husbands.LanguageThere was a written Celtic language, but it developed well into Christian times, so for much of Celtichistory they relied on oral transmission of culture, primarily through the efforts of bards and poets.These arts were tremendously important to the Celts, and much of what we know of their traditionscomes to us today through the old tales and poems that were handed down for generations beforeeventually being written down.DruidsAnother area where oral traditions were important was in the training of Druids. There has been a lotof nonsense written about Druids, but they were a curious lot; a sort of super-class of priests,political advisors, teachers, healers, and arbitrators. They had their own universities, wheretraditional knowledge was passed on by rote. They had the right to speak ahead of the king incouncil, and may have held more authority than the king. They acted as ambassadors in time of war,they composed verse and upheld the law. They were a sort of glue holding together Celtic culture.ReligionFrom what we know of the Celts from Roman commentators, who are, remember, witnesses with anaxe to grind, they held many of their religious ceremonies in woodland groves and near sacred water,such as wells and springs. The Romans speak of human sacrifice as being a part of Celtic religion.One thing we do know, the Celts revered human heads.Celtic warriors would cut off the heads of their enemies in battle and display them as trophies. Theymounted heads in doorposts and hung them from their belts. This might seem barbaric to us, but tothe Celt the seat of spiritual power was the head, so by taking the head of a vanquished foe theywere appropriating that power for themselves. It was a kind of bloody religious observance.The Iron Age is when we first find cemeteries of ordinary peoples burials (in hole-in-the-groundgraves) as opposed to the elaborate barrows of the elite few that provide our main records of burialsin earlier periods.The Celts at WarThe Celts loved war. If one wasn't happening they'd be sure to start one. They were scrappers fromthe word go. They arrayed themselves as fiercely as possible, sometimes charging into battle fullynaked, dyed blue from head to toe, and screaming like banshees to terrify their enemies.They took tremendous pride in their appearance in battle, if we can judge by the elaboratelyembellished weapons and paraphernalia they used. Golden shields and breastplates shared pride ofplace with ornamented helmets and trumpets.The Celts were great users of light chariots in warfare. From this chariot, drawn by two horses, theywould throw spears at an enemy before dismounting to have a go with heavy slashing swords. Theyalso had a habit of dragging families and baggage along to their battles, forming a great milling massof encumbrances, which sometimes cost them a victory, as Queen Boudicca would later discover toher dismay.The main problem with the Celts was that they couldn't stop fighting among themselves long enoughto put up a unified front. Each tribe was out for itself, and in the long run this cost them control ofBritain.